Corrina, the designer I have been working with on our new tabs posted this in the comments below. I wanted to make sure that everyone saw it:

Hi, I'm one of the designers on Visual Studio and I want to throw one more question into the mix... Design #1 allows for slightly less tab text, so truncation may occur more often with this design (imagine 3 or more tabs docked together). Would that affect your tab preference?

//End:Update

Hi everyone – The Visual Studio Design team is currently going back and forth over a few different designs for the tool window tabs in Visual Studio 2005, and we wanted to elicit feedback from the community on what all of you prefer. With the tabs in Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 it can be difficult to determine at a glance which ones are active and which are inactive, which is how we ended up with the designs that we’re prototyping.

The first design style that we’re considering is to move to overlapping tabs, so that the active tab is always visually on top of all other tabs in a group.

Please rate Design #1 on a scale of 1-7 (strongly disagree to strongly agree):1. It is very easy to see which tab is active.2. The tabs are aesthetically pleasing.

The second design style that we’re considering is more reminiscent of the tool window tabs in Visual Studio 2003. Inactive tabs will blend into their tool window tab channel, and only the active tab will have a tab-like appearance.

Please rate Design #2 on a scale of 1-7 (strongly disagree to strongly agree):1. It is very easy to see which tab is active.2. The tabs are aesthetically pleasing.